There is an Irish writer called Kevin Barry and there is an Irish writer called Sebastian Barry and there is an Irish patriot-martyr who is also called Kevin Barry and between the lot of them, I was addled. But not any more. In Cork...

Because the world spins so fast and because he is away often, Himself and myself have ‘planning meetings’ when we sit down with calendar, notebook and diary and get organized, make lists, pencil in dates and discuss where each will be, what each...

In Berlin, where many old accommodation blocks are built around courtyards, by law, a second staircase is provided for emergencies. Our apartment, on the fifth floor of a century old ‘Altbau’ is three sides of a square in shape. At one side is the...

How do members of the British Royal Family feel when they watch William Shakespeare’s historical plays based (albeit sometimes loosely, with literary embroidery) on the derring-do and dastardly deeds of the British Royal Family? Depending on the name given to one, or the title...

Netanyahu’s Disruptive Power The disruption in the city caused by the 2 day visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu of Isreal to Berlin is taking its toll….. He decided to stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which is just down the road from the Zoo Stations,...

Bereaved, Walking in Grunewald It was snowing when he died. Falling on the trees outside the window, on every leaf and bare branch in the forest of Grunewald “….falling faintly upon the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all...

Ostkreutz S Bahn Station doesn’t look much, though it looks a whole lot better than it did a year, two years, three years ago – when one could hardly find the entrance amid the tangle of brambles, detritus and debris, the echoing steel staircase, the...

We probably all have one, a chair on which no one ever sits, but is nonetheless a fixture in the home. “Thing Industries” a company in Australia, aware of this phenomenon, has created and are successfully marketing such an article of furniture. Not making...